An estimated 2.2 million books are published worldwide each year, about half of them in the United States, China, and the United Kingdom. In Pakistan this number is only around four thousand. Usman Siddiqui and Jawad Yusuf claim that the traditional book is still alive and will continue to exist in its present form in the future.
“Our experience is that people want to read books, but access to books needs to be improved. Nowhere in the world has the publication of books diminished. Yes, there was a time when there was a decline in book sales due to digital products, but now the situation is much better.
According to Mustansir Hussain Tarar, considered the best-selling writer of Pakistan, at one time people thought that with the advent of radio and TV, readers would break their relationship with the book, but this did not happen.
“The West is far ahead of us in technology, but the book is still printed there as it used to be. Today more books are being read than ever before. Every year, books worth crores of rupees are sold in a few days at book fairs held in major cities of Pakistan.
